Despite being Whiny Post Day, some people took my I Hate Filler Posts post to mean I was unhappy. Apparently posting about posting is a sign of burnout, despite that actually being an extra post and clearly not a filler post, since I already had my real post for the day. And it was whiny as fitting with the day. I figured I'd clarify a bit. First off, I cannot get burned out, due to the way I write and schedule posts. If I don't want to write, I don't.

I don't actually write every day. Instead I have a general category system of posts which are urgent (see: dicks on the dancefloor), posts which are sort of time-relevant such as counter-posts (Tuesday's dual-spec post), and posts which are sort of vague "here's something I thought of sometime" posts (most of them).

I tend to write a bunch of the last category at once. At one point I had a dozen or so in a day. I then space them out rather than posting a dozen posts in a day and then nothing for a few days. These will get pushed back if the other sort of post comes up. For example, So Sick of Welfare Levels was written days before it went up. I have dozens and dozens of drafts of complete or mostly complete posts which I can call on if I don't feel like writing today, or tomorrow, or possibly for the next month. I won't get burned out because I almost never have to write. In the case of the filler post on Sunday, I was too tired to even glance at posts to pick one. That was a rare occurrence.

Many of the drafts are incomplete or I didn't post them yet because I didn't like how they turned out. But there are at least a week of posts which are ready to go, but got pushed back by more urgent matters such as arguing about talents, calling Gevlon an idiot, and other bloggers writing posts which I don't want to spam with comments as long as a full post.

Perhaps this is an artificial way of blogging. Perhaps I'm supposed to write and post the moment I have a thought, no sooner or later, and not draft them if they turn out poorly. It is a box of sorts, restricting how I post, based on how posts can get pushed back. But is that really so unusual? I'm sure we've all had a stream of ideas and doled them out one at a time rather than dumping twenty emails on our boss' desk or raising our hands with ten questions in a row. It's the polite thing to do. Who wants to read the blog equivalent of that one girl we all knew as teenagers who would go on and on and on in an endless stream of unrelated thoughts punctuated only by like and so and totally and you know?

On the other hand it is liberating in a way. If I have an idea I have at least a day to think about it, develop it, and turn it into something better than the semi-literate offensive rambling which is my normal thought process. I had a post that I made in that style which was started off as a question of economic morality in WoW and quickly veered into Protestant jokes and Hitler. Aw screw it, here you go. Have a blast.

I am going to make one change though. If I have a bit more emotional of a post, I will post it right then. Such as this one. I was a little bit annoyed at the "sky is falling" (blog is falling?) comments. Larisa seems to have this problem too; post the slightest negative thing and suddenly it's all over, quit now before it gets worse, run for cover.

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comments:

I think it's a sensible thing to do. I could never write that many posts at once, but sometimes I do get multiple ideas at a time and then I also always make sure to space them out so they are worth several days of posts. It's nicer to read that way.

I almost always delay posts. Yesterday's whiny post and almost immediate followup advertising my company's free games were time-sensitive beasties, so I wrote them and posted them.

Easily 95% of my posts sit and stew for days if not weeks. I almost always revise them and reword them as my subconscious chews on the ideas and refines the arguments. Occasionally, I'll toss a post out because it's just not working.

I'm not sure if it's an artifact of writing a lot of papers in college or something else. The quick postings are more foreign to me, actually; I prefer to give myself time to refine via a few passes.

If you want to read incoherent emotionally angry ranting blogs with a dozen of different points and subjects, just turn on to my blog.

I do not have the patience nor the orginization skils to do what you do. I wish I did, but the last time i tried to save my posts I just ended up discarding 5 posts because their subject ended up boring me when I went to post them.

@Shintar: That it is. Today's three posts annoy me greatly and I plan to unsubscribe.

@Tesh: It could be the college thing; I learned the hard way it's bad to rush writing.

@Okrane S.: The "only read last topic" thing happened to me a lot when I was just starting to read blogs and didn't actually follow them, just going off blogroll links. Tobold's in particular, I probably missed half his posts.

The problem I found with delaying posts is that invariably what I wanted to say will have been said, probably more eruditely, by a more prominent blogger in the intervening period. Hence, to the recycle bin it goes.

OT: Any chance you could create post collating all the Whiney Day posts from across the blogosphere, seeing as after all it was your idea in the first place ;)

I don't write every day as well, but I have 200 odd drafts of headers and one liners that I'm like ew.. I can't post that.. I reactive blog, sometimes with a couple of big posts kept caged up that I am not brave enough to release. Sometimes I go blank. Like I really feel like I ought to write something profound on this friday - but there is nothing so far. NEED inspiration!